“Enough said.” Henry grinned at her. “Sounds like you need to do some celebrating. I’ll be right back.”

When he returned to the table, he was holding a round bar tray loaded with half-full shot glasses. “What’s this?” Patrick boomed, sliding glasses across the table until everyone had one in front of them.

“In honor of Karina’s independence,” Henry said, holding up a glass. Karina looked around the table of people, all of them holding a shot glass, wishing her well. A warm feeling of belonging engulfed her. She intended to drink the shot in a single gulp as Patrick did, but she could only manage half the liquid (tequila, she later learned), which burned her esophagus and immediately made her dizzy.

“Bottoms up, Karina!” Claire yelled. “You’ve gotta finish it all or it’s bad luck.”

Karina lifted the glass to her lips and threw back her head, guzzling the rest of it down to hollers and cheers of approval.

* * *

Karina awoke the next morning in her bed, uncertain how she’d gotten home. She craned to see the alarm clock and was shocked to find it was nearly noon. Moving her head just that small amount was painful, as if heavy bricks were clanging around in her skull. She closed her eyes and tried to keep her head still so the pain would subside.

Some of the night before came back to her. The bar, the pitchers of free-flowing beer, the tray of tequila shots, then another. How many shots had she had? She could still taste tequila in her throat, that sharp, astringent flavor, the burning sensation on her tongue. Her stomach suddenly lurched and she barely made it to the bathroom before vomiting, realizing as she knelt in front of the toilet that she was naked. Grateful, for once, for her own apartment and bathroom, Karina rinsed out her mouth, splashed water on her face and found a bottle of Advil behind the mirror, which reflected her smeared eye makeup. She moved slowly back to bed, stepping over her purple blouse and skinny jeans inside out, entwined with her panties.

Images flickered through her mind: Henry’s face above her, him unbuttoning her jeans, her slapping his hand away, pushing his shoulder, writhing and twisting underneath him. Oh god, what had happened last night?

She did know one thing that had happened, by the familiar burning sensation in her vagina. Oh god. She reached around to her lower back and touched the smoothness of the patch, right where it should have been. Thank god for that, so familiar it had become a part of her body. She had applied the last patch out of habit, before realizing she might not need it anymore. Karina closed her eyes and fell back asleep for a while, until she was awoken by her phone ringing. She reached down to the floor and pulled it from underneath her jeans.

“Well, good morning!” Claire’s chipper voice came through the line. “You certainly were the life of the party last night. I didn’t know you had those dance moves.”